Review of Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale

SAO is what I would call the anime equivalent of a Michael Bay movie. It's expensive, dumb, and for some reason insanely popular. I have often wondered why people watch such stupid stuff and still manage to enjoy it so much. And it made me realise that I've been thinking about movies entirely the wrong way. What makes a movie/anime good? Is it a good plot? is it good characters? Is it good animation/overall quality? Is it a good score? Overall, I think these are all good, desirable things. But at its core, what makes a piece of media good is if it is enjoyable. SAOis enjoyable. Sure it's dumb. Sure it's stupid. Sure the characters are underwritten. But there is something satisfying about watching Kirito's incel power fantasy. It's still fun to watch him effortlessly beat up enemies and be the centre of attention in everything. The pacing of Ordinal Scale is perfect, and the movie relegates all the stupid things to the climax, when you are already engaged and probably overwhelmed by all the pretty colours and fancy animation. In all, Ordinal Scale has better character development and better story than all other SAO series we've got so far.

But the SAO formula itself was only ever a problem if you had "good taste" in visual media in general. And the fact is that the vast majority of kids watching anime don't. I don't think the aspects we count as making up a good story are the primary focus when it comes to making anime. The primary focus is identifying your target audience, and creating something that perfectly satisfies that target audience. And the entire SAO franchise perfectly satisfies their tween-mid teen target audience.

Of course I personally noticed most of the flaws, and was taken out by a lot of the dumb shit, but after paying attention not only to the anime itself, but also its fans, I think the SAO franchise is a perfect example of how the objective quality of what makes something good should take a back seat to the target audience's enjoyment. In this sense, SAO is right on point. However it's still, and will always remain, an objectively bad franchise. Ordinal Scale is objectively ok. I personally found it pretty average (aside from the art). However from the perspective of a product, SAO Ordinal Scale is genius. It perfectly suits its target audience. And from that perspective, I highly respect this movie despite my 7 rating